Language – The transparent tool: Reflections on reflexivity and instrumentality

• Published in: Language sciences (Oxford) 2017-05, Vol.61, p.5-16
• Main Author: Jones, Peter E.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Abstraction; Communication; Discourse analysis; First order; Greetings; Humor; Meta-language; Opacity; Reflexivity; Speech acts; Transparency
• ISSN: 0388-0001; 1873-5746
• DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2016.09.011

'There are no first-order objects of any kind' in language, as Nigel Love puts it. And yet first-order linguistic communication is crowded with identifiable 'linguistic objects' of innumerable kinds – from names, labels, lists, and words of one syllable to requests, greetings, interviews, jokes and lies. Such metalinguistic reflexivity is fundamental to our linguistic experience and testimony to the 'transparency' of communicative acts and events in relation to the social practices to which they contribute. The paper sets out to explore a range of scholarly insights into this communicational 'transparency' in pursuit of answers to the following questions: 1. Is there value in extending Heidegger's notion of ‘transparent technology’ to linguistic and metalinguistic activity? 2. Is Love's distinction between ‘first-order’ and ‘second-order’ language better viewed as a relationship between different ‘first-order’ linguistic or communicative practices? 3. How does the vital communicational transparency on display in lay analytic linguistic reflection differ from the analytic discourse of the professional linguist? In coming to a position on each question, the paper argues that an understanding of the 'socio-transparency' in evidence in language use warrants a distinction between the 'instrumental abstraction' of the ordinary language user and the 'formal abstraction' of the linguist. •Heidegger's notion of ‘transparent technology’ is applied to linguistic and metalinguistic activity.•Nigel Love's ‘first-order’ and ’second-order’ distinction is viewed as a relationship between different ‘first-order’ communicative practices.•The communicational transparency of lay analytic linguistic reflection differs from the analytical procedures of the linguist.•The ‘instrumental abstraction’ of the ordinary language user differs from the ‘formal abstraction’ of the theoretical linguist.